It is wortli remembering, that when the first Adam fell hy Bin and was cast out of Eden, God mercifully clothed him and covered his nakedness. When the second Adam died as our substitute, and was counted " a curse " for us on the cross. He was stripped naked and His clothes sold.
The object for which John concludes the verse with the words, " These things therefore the soldiers did," is not very apparent. Burgon suggests it may mean, " Such was the part which the soldiers played in this terrible tragedy. Uninflu- enced by the Jews, without any direction from Pilate, these things the soldiers did." This however seems hardly satisfac- tory, because this was not all that the soJdiers did, — I prefer thinking that St. John means to say, that he was actually an eye-witness of the soldiers unconsciously fulfilling an ancient prophecy : " I myself saw, with mine own eyes, the four sol- diers casting lots on my Lord's coat ; and I can testify that I saw the words of the Psalmist literally fulfilled."
Lampe thinks that St. John makes this remark, in order to show how literally Scripture was fulfilled by men who were totally ignorant of Scripture. The Roman soldiers of course knew nothing of the Psalms, yet did the very things predicted in the Psalms.
25. — [Hoio there stood hy the cross, etc.] A wonderfully striking incident is recorded in this and the two following verses, which is not found in the other three Gospels. St. John tells us that at this awful moment, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and other women, two if not three, stood by the cross on which our Lord hung. " Love is strong as death ; " and even amidst the crowd of taunting Jews and rough Roman soldiers, these holy women were determined to stand by our Lord to the last, and to show their unceasing aflection to Him, When we remember that our Lord was a condemned criminal, peculiarly hated by the chief priests, and executed by Roman soldiers, the faithfulness and courage of these holy women can never be sufiiciently ad- mired. As long as the world stands they supply a glorious proof of what grace can do for the weak, and of the strength that love to Christ can supply. When all men but one forsook our Lord, more than one woman boldly confessed Him. Wo- men, in short, were the last at the cross and the first at the tomb.
It is interesting to consider who and what they were, that stood by our Lord's cross as He hung upon it. John, the be- loved disciple, was there, we know ; though with characteris- tic modesty he does not directly name it. But the twenty-sixth verse shows clearly that he was one of the party. He might well be the one that " Jesus loved." No Apostle seems to have had such deep feeling towards our Lord as John. — Mary, the mother of our Lord {netier called the Virgin Mary in Scripture) was there. We must suppose that she had come up f j-om Gali-